


Inner Workings

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, Bonding, Gen, Graphic Description, Hunk (Voltron)-centric, Major Character Injury, Queerplatonic Relationships, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13247934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Denial was a powerful drug, thought Hunk dizzily as he stared down at the rebar puncturing a hole through his gut. So powerful, really, that he could almost pretend he wasn’t seeing it. Almost.Or, Hunk is injured in an accident and trapped in his lion while floating in space, waiting for Keith to get there.





	Inner Workings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mikiri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikiri/gifts).



 

Denial was a powerful drug, thought Hunk dizzily as he stared down at the rebar puncturing a hole through his gut. So powerful, really, that he could almost pretend he wasn’t seeing it. Almost. The pain was indigestion. The blood was just… tomato sauce. Right.

Hunk leaned his head forward onto the dashboard, trying to remember how to breathe. Five minutes ago he’d been fine. Five minutes ago he hadn’t had anything to worry about except making it back to the settlement in time, with building materials and tools and things that they needed to rebuild the homes that the Galra had destroyed.

Maybe if he focused hard enough he could turn the clock back five minutes. Maybe.

“ _Hunk?_ ” A voice flickered through the intercom. Hunk could barely hear it through the blood rushing in his ears – _indigestion just indigestion –_

“Keith. Hey. What’s up?”

“ _Hunk, we heard you scream through the intercom. What happened?_ ”

Screaming? He didn’t remember screaming. Had he blacked out for a few minutes? Maybe.

“I’m fine,” Hunk lied, not really sure why he was lying in the first place. Probably because admitting out loud he was hurt meant he would _really_ be hurt, not just imagining things. Even if the steady drip-drip-drip of blood hitting the floor wouldn’t go away.

“ _Hunk, what’s going on?_ ”

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Just –“ Hunk inhaled, trying to make his breaths _work._ They kept getting trapped in his throat. “Fine. Fine fine fine-“

“ _I’m coming to you._ ” Keith sounded so worried. Hunk tried to tell him there was no reason to be, but the drug was wearing off. Denial was only going to get him so far, especially when his head wouldn’t stop spinning and his blood was pulsing in his veins like a frantic drum.

Reality was starting to set in.

\---

He’d only closed his eyes for a heartbeat, but he opened them again and the view from his screen had changed. Before, he'd been facing the planet of Loxar, watching its pinprick get larger as he approached with its valuable cargo. Now he couldn't see anything but the blackness of empty space, distant stars winking at him.

He tried to get up, and pain ripped through him - he was _stuck._ His fingers found the rebar again. It hadn't left. He'd kind of been hoping.

"Anybody?" he croaked. Denial was definitely not doing him any good. He moved his shaky hand behind him and found the other side of the rebar, and traced it back -

His hand hit his seat.

He was pinned to his seat.

Hunk took a deep breath in, a sob leaving him as another lancing shot of pain reverberated through his stomach. He wasn't any good at first aid. He didn't know what to do.

"Is anybody there?"

" _Hunk. Hunk, it's me, Keith. I'm on my way. Remember?"_

"I - I remember."

 

Keith's voice softened. " _Just the two of us on this channel. Talk to me, buddy. Come on."_

 

"There's a - a thing. Sticking into me. I pulled my lion into a stop too fast and -" Not indigestion. "It's sticking right _through_ me. I don't know how to deal with that." He tried to breathe. "What's taking you so long to get here?"

 

" _We only spoke five minutes ago. It's okay._ "

 

"Then why does everything look so different?"

 

" _It looks like your lion is drifting. Can you talk to her?_ "

 

Hunk shook his head, even though he knew Keith couldn't see it. He and Yellow didnt' _have_ that kind of relationship. He could feel her. He knew what she wanted, sometimes. But they'd never spoken. They'd never crossed that boundary or found a way to get a closer bond. Pidge had; Shiro had, before he'd disappeared -

 

" _Hunk? Stay with me._ "

 

"I'm not going anywhere," Hunk mumbled. He was sweating enough to have it drip onto the dashboard. That was ridiculous. How could he be sweating if he was so cold?

 

His stomach didn't hurt anymore. Hunk didn't know much about medicine, but he knew enough to know that that was a bad thing.

 

He reached forward and pressed a hand to the dashboard, wiping away the beads of sweat, and murmured - too low for Keith to hear - "Please don't leave me."

 

His lion was silent. But he was still here. That was something.

 

\----

 

" _Hunk?"_ Keith's voice crackled through the static again.

 

He hadn't passed out. He hadn't passed out. He - his hands were so pale they looked like they belonged to a white man, and his head wouldn't stop spinning. The entire front of his shirt was covered with blood.

 

"I'm here," he murmured, then, "I'm here," a little more loudly. Keith didn't respond right away, and Hunk found himself laughing through the tears in his eyes. "We're supposed to get injured in battle. This is ridiculous. Keith, this is ridiculous. I'm not supposed to be hurt."

 

" _Are you still bleeding?_ "

 

Hunk looked down dizzily at the piece of rebar. The black metal vanished into his splintered armour - how much force did it take to _splinter_ armour? - and he gingerly touched the blood underneath it. Still liquid. "A bit. I think. I think the rebar is - is plugging it."

 

“ _Alright. That’s good. I just need you to keep breathing for me, alright?_ ”

 

“Breathing. I can do that.” Actually, he had his doubts.

 

\---

 

When his vision began to go yellow, Hunk was proud of himself for not panicking. Realistically, he was just too out of it to react with anything more than a surprised ‘oh’, even as his brain slowly processed that it _probably_ meant he was dying.

 

<You’re not dying.>

 

“Are you sure?” he asked with a laugh. The voice wasn’t so much of a voice as it was an echo in his head, beyond sound.

 

<I won’t let you.> The voice was gruff, a little torn around the edges, decidedly androgynous.

 

“Hey, uh, are you my lion?” Hunk asked, his breaths still shaky. “Cause if you are, can you just… psychic-Altean-magic this thing out of me?” He hadn’t decided yet how he felt about _anything_ being in his brain. Technically his lion was always in his brain. But this was so much more immediate, and so much more alien.

 

<I could. But then you’d bleed to death.>

 

“…Cheerful. You know, in all my _other_ mental conversations with you, you weren’t morbid and weird,” Hunk grumbled.

 

<Being ten thousand years old gives one an odd sense of humour. How are you feeling?>

 

“You’re psychically linked to me,” Hunk grumped. “You know how much this hurts.”

 

<You aren’t dying. If that helps.>

 

“Are you lying?”

 

<I don’t lie. I do on occasion find useful ways to word things. How’s this – you’re not dying _now._ >

 

Hunk spluttered in laughter, then cringed in pain again. “Oww…” Ow didn’t really describe it anymore. But at least it was _hurting_ again, which seemed, overall, like a good sign.

 

<I am sorry.>

 

“Why? It’s not your fault I can’t fuckin’ fly.”

 

<Perhaps not. But I think it’s what I’m supposed to say.>

 

Hunk laughed, then coughed into his arm. He pulled it away, and tried to pretend he wasn’t seeing the blotch of blood on his armour. He wasn’t coughing up blood. Tomato sauce. Right. “You’re new to speaking with actual words, huh?”

 

<It seemed appropriate to try.>

 

He was struggling to breathe again. “I just want this thing out of me. Can you help or not-“

 

<I’m trying to help keep you calm. The Red Lion is coming.>

 

It was kind of disappointing, really. He still hadn’t bonded enough with his lion to feel what they felt, to have the kind of empathic connection that he knew from Allura they were _supposed_ to have. Instead the two of them were stuck with this… odd back and forth that felt like talking through a bad translator. It wasn’t as comforting as Hunk had hoped, or as Yellow had probably intended.

 

“Look, I don’t –“ Hunk gulped. “This really hurts. And talking makes it hurt more. How do I – how do I talk to you regularly? On – on your terms?”

 

There was a horrible silence. Then - <You can’t. Not yet.>

 

“Then why talk to me at all?” He wanted to cry. Everything hurt. Everything _hurt_ and he just wanted the warmth Pidge kept talking about, he wanted company –

 

<Because I love you.>

 

Then he really was crying, the topaz light in the cockpit blurring into fractals that spun and whirled.

 

Hands.

 

There were hands on his shoulders, a hand on his face –

 

“Hunk. Hunk! Can you hear me?”

 

His vision began slowly to clear, but there were still lights dancing in his eyes, lights dancing around Keith’s face as it began to come into view. “When did you get here?”

 

“Just now. You can hear me?”

 

“…Y-yeah. You can get me out of this, right?”

 

“I-I think so. We just need to get you into a pod-“ Keith eyed the rebar. “I think we’re gonna have to leave that in you –“

 

“No,” Hunk whispered. He could feel it burning, like poison. “Please – you can fly fast enough. I don’t care just get it out of me, _please –_ “

 

“It’s going right through your liver, I can’t, you’ve just – look, I’m going to rope my lion to yours and we’ll get you back to the Castle –“

 

Hunk shook his head with a whimper. He was trembling, he realizing – shaking badly enough that he could feel the rebar even more keenly, punching through him with a clean slice that blades would have envied, and it was bleeding again, warm _stuff_ spouting onto his hand as he grappled at it. “No,” he mumbled. “No, I want it out –“

 

“Hunk, you _can’t,_ it’s _stuck-_ Hunk, listen to me, please!”

 

He grasped it as firmly as he could, hands slipping over the metal – he couldn’t find a purchase to pull, so he _pushed._ And the rebar, inch by inch, slid back through him, and it hurt, jesus fuck it hurt, but it was _leaving_ him, the poison was getting out –

 

A slap rang out, sending a whisper of shock over his cheek. He let go of the rebar, and looked at his hands with a knot of shame in his throat, his own blood dripping off of his fingers.

 

Keith grabbed his face. “Look at me.”

 

“I – I –“

 

“ _Look at me._ Fifteen minutes. I need you to hold on for fifteen minutes.”

 

Fifteen minutes. It might as well have been fifteen days. But Hunk nodded anyway. Then Keith was gone again, and Hunk tried to hang on onto what it had felt like when he was here, because the loneliness was stretching out in front of him again, and pain made everything so _slow._

He opened his mouth, feeling like a fool with the tears pouring down his face. “We’ll bond properly eventually. Right?”

 

<In time.>

 

“I don’t know how.”

 

<Everything happens when it is meant to.>

 

“I didn’t take you for a mystic.” His fingers were itching, his stomach was itching – all he wanted to do was yank out the pole and let the rest just happen as it would. It was such a dangerous impulse. He had to ignore it. He wasn’t sure how.

 

<Our workings are almost as much of a mystery to us as they are to you.>

 

He paused at that, head cocking up to stare at the lights that blinked on his dashboard. “…Really?”

 

<We know the basics. We understand that we exist. We understand that Alfor made us out of a comet. And to some degree or another, we’re aware of our capabilities.> The voice grew soft, a little sad. <But part of my journey with you, Hunk, is learning about myself.>

 

“How do you not _know_ , though?”

 

<That pole within you is piercing your liver. Are you aware of all the things your liver does?>

 

“Mostly, I mean… it filters out toxins. That’s most of what I know.” He managed a weak smile. “I didn’t pay attention in biology.”

 

<So you see. It isn’t so hard not to know. You’d be a mystic too.>

 

Hunk leaned his head gently on the dashboard – this time in an attempt at sympathy as well as out of exhaustion. “…It bothers you.”

 

<Of course.>

 

He was going to pass out again. He could feel it coming this time, in the black spots at the edge of his vision. But he could take a little bit of comfort in that – that Yellow was _trying._ Yellow _wanted_ to bond with him. Both of them were reaching out, trying to figure out how, trying to understand the other. They just hadn’t gotten there yet.

 

\----

 

He felt the castle before he opened his eyes, the sudden jolt that meant that Keith had brought him home. Then there were hands on him again, two, four, six –

 

“This is going to hurt a lot-“ Keith’s warning murmur, brushing his ear, a quiet kiss at his temple to try calm him down as much as possible, and it worked until there was a _pull_ and then a horrific emptiness inside him –

 

His eyes flickered open and he looked down. Keith pushed his head back up, put a hand over his eyes – “Hunk, don’t look” – but it was too late. He’d seen the hole inside him, seen the way blood was rushing to fill it, and he would have been sick if he’d had the energy so instead the nausea rushed into his head, over and over and over –

 

“Shush, shush, it’s going to be okay,” Keith said, repeating it until Hunk could almost believe it. Alteans could fix just about anything. He _knew_ that. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel like he was dying.

 

They were putting something inside him. Cloth? Rags? He didn’t know. If it kept hurting, that was good. If it kept hurting that was good. If it kept hurting that was good.

 

“The pod’s right here, Hunk.”

 

“Don’t leave me –“ He reached out, trying to grasp something, anything. Keith took Hunk’s hand long enough to squeeze it, but then the others were backing Hunk into the pod, and Keith had to let go.

 

The blue glass came down. Hunk just hoped there was more to come. He’d survive this. He’d survive this. He’d –

 

_he was fine_

-survive this-

 

_our workings are almost_

-he was going to be fine-

 

_as much of a mystery to ourselves as to you._

And then he was sleeping, and he knew that he was sleeping. That was good. There was a difference between sleeping and being unconscious, and he could feel it in his bones, in his blood, in his flesh.

 

He’d survive this.


End file.
